The problem with Nigeria’s sovereign wealth fund

Apr 19, 2023|Adesola Afolabi

Key questions:

Nigeria's Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) declared a 33% profit decline in Nigeria’s Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) last year. What led to the drop, and how worried should Nigerians be?
The government has injected about $1.8 billion of Nigeria’s surplus income from crude oil sales into the SWF so far. But what is the job of the SWF, and how adequate have the capital injections been?

When making and managing oil wealth, Nigeria is no stranger to high-stakes games, such as deciding to invest in education or paying petrol subsidies.

But while some of these economic decisions often seem like the government is simply rolling the dice (just taking its chances), other times, it appears to take a more strategic approach, as seen with the establishment of the country's sovereign wealth fund.

A couple of weeks ago, managers of Nigeria’s Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF), the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA), released details of its 2022 financial performance.

The bottom line was that the net assets of the NSIA, which manages the surplus income from crude oil sales, hit ₦1 trillion (over $2 billion), doubling the capital NSIA started with over ten years ago.

However, last year, NSIA also recorded its biggest profit decline (-33%) since 2017.